


When Tim Loved Ivo

by baranduin



Series: No Night Is Too Long [18]
Category: No Night is Too Long (2002)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-14
Updated: 2010-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-06 06:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baranduin/pseuds/baranduin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angst, ahoy, Ivo style. Definitely movie verse, I suppose a reference to book verse but only to twist it around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Tim Loved Ivo

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the fanfic100 community challenge #079--When.

Do you know that it's possible to see the exact moment when love dies?

"I love you," I told him. Still not quite sure why I did it; it was such an enormous leap of trust and faith for me to take, and with such a dubious prospect as Tim. I certainly hadn't planned on it, at least not at that specific moment. Oh, I knew I would tell him eventually; after all I would have to for we were to spend the rest of our lives together and I could not have lived in honesty with him if I hadn't. There wouldn't have been any point.

But I thought it would all happen in a very low-key way, that we'd be sitting in a restaurant somewhere or even at home and all would be quiet and calm and I would say it, softly, and Tim would answer back with, "I love you, too." I suppose puppies and kittens and rainbows figured into the fantasy as well.

It didn't happen at all that way. In the end, we fought over my trip to Alaska; he wanted to come and I knew it would be terrible if he did. And he behaved dreadfully, so unbelievably childishly even for him that I think a part of me will be forever surprised that I chose that moment to inform him of my true feelings.

So I said it. I'm sure I blurted it out, quick, before I could pull it back in. "I love you." I know I said a few other things appropriate to the moment that also happened to be true. I kept my eyes on him the entire time, and it pleased me to see the air go out of him as if I'd punched him in his belly. He looked stunned, presumably in a happy manner (such as receiving a birthday present you want very very much but are sure you will never get and therefore are shocked into silence and immobility for a few moments). I wanted to give him a little time to catch his breath and so I kissed him. Very well, I wanted to kiss him, needed terribly to kiss him, so I did.

It's too bad I ever pulled back from that kiss and looked into his eyes again. What had been there before was gone, and it never came back. Some time later, I thought of it again and decided it had been like blowing out the proverbial candle. It was that quick and that final though it took me more than a little time to come to believe it.

Even now, sometimes, when I walk from classroom to office and Tim is walking beside me in my mind, I still think about how I might have done things differently.

How little it can take to break something apart, in our case just three words, three very short yet very loaded words.

I have also asked myself the question of whether what I saw in Tim's eyes before his love died was the real thing or some imagining of mine (just as I imagined what his response would be and was so dead wrong). I suspect it is better than I don't go down that path. The slip and fall I've had already have been enough, I think. Still …


End file.
